The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has begun an early-stage clinical trial of an investigational vaccine designed to protect against yellow ...

Yellow fever virus (YFV), a close relative of Zika virus and transmitted by the same type of mosquito, is the cause of an often-fatal viral hemorrhagic fever and could spread via air travel from endemic areas in Africa to ...

Schistosomiasis (also known as snail fever) affects more than 250 million people worldwide. Individuals become infected after skin contact with the schistosome parasite in contaminated water, and, without treatment, experience ...

Disease ecologists working in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, Peru, have quantified for the first time how a fever affects human mobility during the outbreak of a mosquito-borne pathogen. The findings were published by Proceedings ...

A team of scientists has developed a system that can forecast the outbreak of dengue fever by simply analyzing the calling behavior of citizens to a public-health hotline. This telephone-based disease surveillance system ...

Some health professionals have lobbied to postpone the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics due to the risk of the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitos and – less commonly – through sexual intercourse. Other experts disagree ...

An effort to reduce mosquitoes and prevent the spread of viruses such as Zika in the Cayman Islands by releasing genetically altered mosquitoes is to start next week, officials in the British Caribbean territory said Thursday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday it would help Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo launch a mass vaccination campaign against a yellow fever outbreak ravaging the two countries.

Faced with the worst yellow fever outbreak in parts of Africa in decades and running low on vaccine, the World Health Organization plans to use only fractional doses of the vaccine in some areas when it launches an emergency ...

Fever

Fever (also known as pyrexia) is a common medical sign characterized by an elevation of temperature above the normal range of 36.5–37.5 °C (98–100 °F) due to an increase in the body temperature regulatory set-point. This increase in set-point triggers increased muscle tone and shivering.

As a person's temperature increases, there is, in general, a feeling of cold despite an increasing body temperature. Once the new temperature is reached, there is a feeling of warmth. A fever can be caused by many different conditions ranging from benign to potentially serious. There are arguments for and against the usefulness of fever, and the issue is controversial. With the exception of very high temperatures, treatment to reduce fever is often not necessary; however, antipyretic medications can be effective at lowering the temperature, which may improve the affected person's comfort.

Fever differs from uncontrolled hyperthermia, in that hyperthermia is an increase in body temperature over the body's thermoregulatory set-point, due to excessive heat production and/or insufficient thermoregulation.